Conservative globalists versus defensive nationalists: political parties and paradoxes of Europeanization in Turkey

The period since the December 1999 Helsinki summit has been a time of remarkable economic and political change in Turkey. The EU impact was already evident in the 1990s, with the 1995 Customs Union Agreement exerting a significant impact in terms of initiating important economic and political reforms. Yet arguably the real breakthrough occurred and the momentum of ‘Europeanization’ gathered considerable pace, once the goal of full EU membership became a concrete possibility with the recognition in 1999 of Turkey’s candidate status. Political parties have emerged as agents of Europeanization, while themselves being transformed in the Europeanization process. The objective of the present paper is to highlight the role of political parties in Turkey’s recent Europeanization process and to underline some of the peculiarities of the Turkish party system and of some of the key parties as agents of economic and political transformation. From a comparative perspective, the following aspects of Turkey’s Europeanization appear rather striking and paradoxical. Civil society actors have been much more active and vocal in their push for EU membership and the associated reform process than the major political parties. Within civil society, business actors and notably big business have emerged as central. Turning to the parties, the ‘Islamists’ have been transformed much more than their ‘secularist’ counterparts. A political party with explicit Islamist roots, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), established itself as a vigorous supporter of EUrelated reforms following its November 2002 election victory. Yet another paradox is that many of the established parties on both the left and right of the political spectrum can be characterized as ‘defensive nationalists’, in the sense that they are broadly supportive of EU membership in principle but tend to be uncomfortable with key elements of EU conditionality. If membership could be accomplished without reforms, many of these parties would welcome the opportunity. Finally a central paradox is that ‘social democracy’ remains, for historical and other reasons, the element least affected by the ongoing